Steve Plotnicki

No it's the food that's all wet from that water based cuisine.

The metaphor is fine. It's just that bridges need to take you somewhere other than your past.

Fat Guy - Well having grown up in the kosher food industry I know how corrupt it can be. Go try and manufacture something for the kosher market and see how much it costs you to put a rabbinical supervision label on your item. The nonsensical rules and regulations that they have installed in this country to get things ceritified kosher are akin to having to pay off the mafia. And it makes items expensive, and the additional expense lowers quality significantly. Back in the good old days when people ate things like stuffed derma, my father had a friend who was an expert stuffed derma maker. So good that they decided they wanted to sell it commercially. So my father and he explored with the Long Island Council of Rabbis what it would entail to get a certification for the derma. When they added up all the costs, the cost of derma per pound was more than beef! And derma is really nothing more than ground vegetables. So you don't have to build any bridges for me. I was a yeshiva boy until the 6th grade and I attended an orthodox temple when I grew up. I have spent all of my teenage and adult life making sure I leave that isolated, prejudiced against all others who are not Jews, treat women as inferior way of life behind me. Do me a favor and build a bridge for someone else. I'm going to have a ham sandwich for lunch.

And I heard he's drowning in debt.

Well further to Fat Guy's point, when I moved into Manhattan from Queens the first thing I noticed is how all the local shops encourage people to open house accounts. That was pretty unusual in Queens other than from certain types of shops like the butcher. But the hardware store or the dry cleaner would never offer credit. And I think the stand in the Hamptons is more like a city retailer (after all much of the clientele comes from the city) then the type of greengrocer you would find in Queens. And Associated Foods in East Harlem is really no different then Queens where credit is unavailable. Tommy - If you still don't understand it after FG's excellent explanation, as applied to Margaret's original contention that there are customers you can't afford to have, i.e., they aren't always right, what that really means is that customers aren't worth it if they aren't going to be a money making proposition. Or be a pain in the ass some other way. I brought up the Hamptons story because obviously it could have been handled either way. Let the woman owe you the $25 or tell her you will hold the groceries aside and have her go home and get the cash. The stand's owner made a judgement call that she would make more money by letting her owe the money. And the reason a greengrocer in Queens doesn't allow it is too high a percentage of people stiff him.

No I haven't. But I heard they weren't flooded with reservations.

That makes no sense because the Jewish community is wealthy and they can pay the uptick to get kosher sirloins. Like anything else, the issue is demand and there is no demand for it in the U.S. And the reason for that is cultural, nobody knows you can do it. That misconception can only be perpetuated by rabbis and the rabbinical councils would be the culprit there. So the issue comes down to cost at the slaughterhouse/wholesale level (and I was using rabbi as a generic term for all persons needed to certify something kosher), or the rabbis having a vested interest in not explaining it to their congregations.

These are just guesses but it's possible that the issue has to do with rabbinical supervision and the cost related to it. For sciatic nerve removal, if a rabbi needs to be present during the burchering process there is a significant cost attached. But they only have to be present for the slaughter of the animal if only the shoulder and up is what gets sold as kosher. Another possibility is that rabbinical boards in this country made a deliberate decision to not to approve certain cuts as a way to keep Jews from assimilating. It's the no driving on Sabbath logic.

I hear they are having a drought at La Cote d'Or these days.

Of course the customer is always right. But if the customer insists on conducting business outside of the parameters you have set for your own business, whether he is right or not doesn't matter. That is where the line is drawn because, one has to run their business as they see fit and according to some rules and principals. That is what I get from your husband's little motto. Service as long as you don't ruin my life and business in the process. I will tell you a great story. A few weeks back I was at what is arguably the most famous farm stand in the Hamptons. My wife and I have been shopping there for nearly 20 years. While we were on the line to check out, a woman a few customers in front of us tried to pay with a credit card and they only take cash. When she finds this out she starts making a scene. The owner of the stand who happened to be chatting with us sees this and rushes over and says to the women that it's okay, she can take her purchases (which amounted to about $25) and come back another time and pay for them. The women was clearly embarassed but then calmed down a little, thanked them and left. They didn't even take her name down. The owner comes back to us and says that this year, for the first time in years, she has had a number of customers where the exact same thing happened and she couldn't figure out why it was happening but after it happened a few times she decided that it was a function of the economy getting a bit softer. "Some people just don't have the type of cash they used to have" she told us. She went onto say that if this person stiffs her for the $25, it will be no big deal. But if not, she has made a customer for life. Now not every businessperson would reach that conclusion, or would be as deft as this women was to both stop a scene that was going on in her establishment, and try and to build a long-term relationship at the same time. So where the line gets drawn ain't that easy. Because many a business owner would have sent that women packing based on the I can't afford to have you as a customer theory.

Or like my father used to do when he got too old to go to the market at 4:30 in the morning. He would pay off his salesman at the wholesaler every week to make sure he got good meat. You didn't realize that there was a schmear in fleishichs di you?

"Fischer Bros. is fine, but they're getting their kosher meat from the same places every damn kosher butcher around here gets their meat." Nina - While that might be the case, Fisher Bros. might get superior meat for other reasons. All of the best butcher shops and steakhouses go to the wholesalers every morning in person and choose shoulders and ribs themselves. That can make an enormous difference in quality. Imagine what kind of dreck the butcher can deliver to your home when you just call him on the phone. You do much better in person. Same principal here.

How do you know the fruitflys didn't get into the wine when they made it or at the bottling facility?

Make sure you don't use a knife that touched traif. I like to keep things kosher between us.

Kosher salt.

There is no such thing as kosher sirloin so that is why brisket was substituted. I've never had a good kosher burger. They always taste kosher. Maybe Jaybee has found the secret recipe. But I recently had a burger at Cafe Louis in Boston that was made solely from prime rib. That was pretty good, and that cut is kosher.

You have to have morals before you can impose morality on others .

Gavin - I'm going to keep away from the usual suspects. Of course there are great sweet wines like d'Yqueem or Huet. A personal favorite of mine is the Recioto from dal Forno Romano in Italy. The 1988 is a particularly good vintage for it as well. It's a red dessert wine and it is sort of like an Amarone but not as heavy. I find the wine to have truly amazing terroir with a real taste of the earth. I like a good Vin Santo as well and the Avignonesi in good years is terrific. In the U.S., and I'm not sure it's available in the U.K., Pelligrini Vineyards on the North Fork of Long Island makes a simple and delcicious dessert wine for about $30 a half bottle.

And neither was your last one Mr. Troublemaker.

"Is there any reason why we can't have the common courtesy to keep these kind of things to ourselves?" Ooh, ooh, ooh, another food fight. Joe - If I can speak for Nina, as well as try and reel this point in so there is no further animosity vented, I think the posters here often impose their sensibilities on an issue but I think John takes it a bit further than that. Quite often you can draw an inference from his posts that he is imposing a morality and making value judgements about other posters. And there are a number of posters here who thinks that goes to far. But I don't think that has anything to do with his actual person. I'm sure he is a lovely man and would be a pleasure to dine with. He's just a pain in the ass on a chat room.

Right before meals is a good time to snack. Bound to get your wife or mother yelling at you.

What's the purpose of putting the fish in the oil before it heats up? Or was that just an accident?

Well as much as Tony hates lists and numerical ratings, and John dislikes hiearchys, you all have just made the best argument for ratings and hierarchys. It's because it is unclear why they put a red star next to certain restaurants. And that is a function of the reviews being uneven. In a very long list of restaurants like the Time Out Guide, it's important for a reader, unless they want to spend hundreds of hours deciphering their code, to be able to get a quick handle as to what they are recommending, and to what degree they are recommending it. It's extremely useful information and for example, if I have to be in London for business for 3-4 days and I get the guide in advance of my visit, it wouldn't be unsual for all of my meals to be at the best rated places. Now that they don't have the top 5 I have a harder time determining which places are"must go" and which ones are just recommended.

Okay everybody back to their corners. Can we stop this now?

Gee anyone who has been a live peformer, or who has been part of a performance, that peaked in a way so as to move the audience physically totally understands this concept. Having taken part in that phenomenon both onstage and in the audience, I assure you that the people who make the moment peak are not ordinarily replaceable. I'm even surprised that Whiting, who as a recording engineer has sat though through endless flawed takes only to catch that special and "magical" take that comes along on the rare occassion, just can't admit that. Different takes aren't just all relative. There are great takes and there are lousy ones. Some of them are quite magical.